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Giygas
Giygas (ギーグ Gīgu) is a fictional character in the 1989 video game Mother and the 1995 video game EarthBound. Known as both the "Embodiment of Evil" and the "Universal Cosmic Destroyer," Giygas is an evil alien who intends to sentence all of reality to the horror of infinite darkness. With an army of Starmen, Octobots and other deadly war machines, Giygas also uses his immense power to influence certain Earthlings to assist him, such as Pokey Minch for example. Biography Abducted from Earth by an alien race in 1909, a woman named Maria along with her husband George raised Giygas from infancy. During this time, George studied the aliens' PSI powers without their permission, culminating with his escape back to Earth. Once he matured, Giygas was tasked by his people to ensure that PSI never spread onto Earth, however Giygas did not want to betray those who raised him, particularly Maria. In the end, he was forced to detach himself from Maria and begin preparations for the invasion of Earth. Eighty years later the invasion begins, although Giygas is confronted by the great-grandson of Maria and George, Ninten, and his companions. By singing a song once shared between Maria and Giygas, the comforting memories he had suppressed weaken him causing his surrender and retreat, but not without promising to take revenge on Ninten. Giygas returns to Earth many years later as the primary antagonist of EarthBound, though he vastly differs from his appearance in Mother. Giygas gains such tremendous evil power that it destroys his entire being, including his mind, henceforth losing all semblance of life. As such, Giygas manifests as what can only be described as pure evil; in Pokey Minch's words, "he is the Evil Power." Due to the loss of his mind, Giygas becomes irrational, and incapable of thought; in the final battle, Pokey points out that Giygas isn't aware of himself, or what he is doing, referring to him as "an all-mighty idiot." This is highly reminiscent of the Lovecraftian god Azathoth, who is referred to as the "Blind Idiot God." Now wielding vast cosmic power (and uncontrollably using it), Giygas becomes a threat to the existence of the universe. Ten years after the beginning of EarthBound, Giygas initiates the apocalypse. The only known being who manages to escape destruction is an alien insectoid named Buzz Buzz, who travels back in time ten years and warns Ness of the impending catastrophe. In Ness' present-day, Giygas' influence is seen throughout the Earth, mainly in the form of enemies that Ness encounters. Now existing as the whole of evil power in the universe, Giygas is able to manipulate the evil in the minds of living beings, both human and animal, and he can apparently manipulate even the forms of inanimate objects. In the final battle, Giygas is held within the Devil's Machine, an eyeball-like machine (with an image of Ness' face inside) created to contain Giygas' tremendous power. During the battle, Pokey shuts it off, causing all of Giygas' power to be unleashed; an event that creates a chaotic, bizarre dimension all around them in which only Giygas and the five children remained trapped in darkness. His attacks are random and incomprehensible, and his speech is erratic and mindless. He is eventually defeated after Paula calls out to the people of the Earth to pray (including the player), and the combined prayers reach Giygas and exploit his weakness, which turns out to be human emotions (possibly due to his loss of Maria). He fades into nothingness, and his apocalyptic future is erased. Interpretations Shigesato Itoi has stated that his inspiration for Giygas' speech in EarthBound came from a traumatic childhood experience where he mistakenly walked into an adult movie theater and caught a glimpse of a rape scene in the 1957 film The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty (憲兵とバラバラ死美人 Kenpei to Barabara Shibijin). In actuality there was no rape scene in this film, instead a murder scene. As Itoi was a child at the time, he has stated his lasting memory of this experience is fuzzy at best. Trivia * Giygas' battle sprite in Mother vaguely resembles the Pokémon Mewtwo, most significantly its battle sprite in the series' Yellow version. Of note, a number of developers behind the Mother later went on to develop Pokémon. * There is major speculation within the Mother community that Giygas was originally intended to return in Mother 3 as an unused boss character, but was ultimately deemed too frightening for the new, younger audience. An alternative answer to the interpretation of the boss as Giygas is that he was dropped from Mother 3 due to his fitting destruction at the climax of EarthBound. Category:Characters Category:EarthBound Category:Enemies Category:Giygas Category:Mother Category:People from outer space Category:PSI